Alzheimer's Disease is a common neurodegenerative disease affecting the elderly, resulting in progressive memory impairment, loss of language and visuospatial skills, and behavior deficits. Modulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 2, which is prevalent in the cortex and hippocampus and regulates the release of the brain's major excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate at key neural synapses has been demonstrated to have a major role in cognitive processing. Further, modulation of mGluR2 improves cognitive performance in preclinical species (Higgins, G. A. et al. (2004) Pharmacological manipulation of mGlu2 receptors influences cognitive performance in the rodent. Neuropharmacology 46, 907-917).
The metabotropic glutamate receptors are known to contain one or more allosteric sites, which may alter the affinity with which glutamate and other mGluR ligands bind to the primary binding or orthosteric sites. As the orthosteric binding site is highly conserved between all of the known metabotropic glutamate receptors, functional selectivity may best be achieved through allosteric interaction with the receptor.